Seamus Cooney, English

Interactive Quiz on Meter

Test your grasp of terms and your ability to identify meters by
name.

It's worth pointing out that what you're learning
here is
merely a bit of terminology or jargon and the ability to apply it
accurately. Naming meters is not the same as being sensitive to effects of
rhythm in poems. Good readers who can hear what they're
reading will respond to the poet's effects even if they lack the terms to
name them. Still, it's worthwhile to be able to discuss effects. I hope to
add another quiz which will invite choices of a more subtle kind, between
more and less expressive ways of scanning (i.e. hearing) lines of
poetry.

Do this quiz often enough so you gain confidence.

You can
also, to test your memory, see this quiz without suggested answers.
Click
here.

Memorize Coleridge's mnemonic lines to help you with the names of
the feet. I list the main ones below, using a hyphen to show a weakly
stressed syllable and a virgule or slash to show a strongly stressed
syllable:

iamb

- /

"beCOME"

trochee

/ -

"PRU frock"

spondee

/ /

"LONG DAY"

dactyl

/ - -

"SYLL ab le"

anapest

- - /

"in ter FERE"

Trochee trips from long to short.
From long to long in solemn sort.
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yea ill-able.
Ever to keep up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long,
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

"Long" and "short" are terms drawn from the metrics of Latin quantitative
verse. English verse is patterned by accent or stress, so we
use terms like "stressed and unstressed" or "strong and weak" to describe the
meter. Remember that it is syllables that get counted and marked, not whole
words, so don't let your eye mislead your ear.

In what follows, the
diagonal slash marks a
strongly stressed syllable, the
hyphen a relatively weakly stressed syllable (relative, that is, to the
adjacent syllables).